How much do you charge or pay for fresh chicken eggs?

I have been selling my fresh eggs to co-workers for a couple years now. They often tell me I should charge more.....and maybe I should...but....I don't really want to nickel and dime My friends.
In the end I make enough money from the eggs to pay for the feed I buy so it equals out to free eggs for me. I charge $2.50 a dozen.

I am curious how  much others charge and who they are selling to. I am thinking of putting lights in the hen house to keep the girls laying longer in the winter, but I am not sure it is worth it??

A couple of bawks!

I asked $2.50 per dozen when I was selling them.

A couple of bawks!

Ha! did you make a Bawk Bawk Here and a Bawk bawk there.

The price, a person can charge for eggs produced on a small farm, really 'depends' on quite a number of related factors.

I get $5 a dozen and certified organic neighbours can get $6.  However before getting too excited about these prices, we live in an isolated area where most feed other than what you grow yourself, is imported at high transportation costs. 

My $5 cost to my customers pretty much reflects what it costs on average to keep a small laying flock during a year. And keep my family in eggs.
At a rate of about one dozen per week.

I don't live far from you and charge $4.00.
I get my feed at Del's or Monroe Farm and Feed.
You must have one cheap feed connection or grow your own cause I can't see how you can get your money back to cover feed at 2.00 or 3.00 for that matter.

Monroe Farm and Feed should be having their yearly poultry feed sale shortly and I'll stock up big time to save some cash.

I'm also growing corn, sunflowers, and pumpkins this year to help in feed cost.

Just because store cost is so much cheaper don't feel bad about charging more.

When people compare taste, nutrition, see how much better your eggs looks compared to store eggs understanding how the majority of the chickens live that produce those cheap eggs they will be more than happy to pay what it costs to produce a great meal.

We charge $4/doz.  It's pretty much the going rate around here for farmer's market eggs.  We feed certified organic food and supplement with things around the farm (organic, but not certified).  We are too small to bother with certification.  But with proper marketing and such, I've seen $6/doz for organic eggs (blue ones).  Our price just covers the feed bill so we feel it's appropriate.

I buy them for $3.85/doz in MO.  I've seen them for sale between $3 and $5 out here.

I live in a small town in central florida and we are buying eggs for $1.50 a dozen. We have traded with this lovely person and we get to go visit the chickens which are just down the road. When my collards start producing we will get the eggs for the collards. Pretty neat. The prices I have seen on this discussion are pretty high. I wouldnt pay $5.00 for a dozen eggs even if they were the last dozen on the planet!

My sister quoted $4.50 and $5/dozen around Boston and southeast Mass.  Makes me want to move to the Cape.

5$ a dozen for certified organic eggs / in the Quebec-Laurentide region.

healingpixie wrote:
The prices I have seen on this discussion are pretty high. I wouldnt pay $5.00 for a dozen eggs even if they were the last dozen on the planet!

I've seen "Free-Range" eggs at major grocery stores for at least that much. Also, I work at a farm that sells eggs for $5.50 a dozen, and I think it's worth it for all the good organic food the chickens eat, all the fresh grass they get because we move them around, ect. If we were to charge less we'd be losing money in the egg business. Our customers love our eggs and feel the price is fair.

In Salt Lake Cities farmer's market and organic grocers they are $5 a dozen and worth every cent.

I visited a certified organic egg seller in olympia...his eggs were $4 or $5 a dozen. But for his eggs to be organic he had to get his organic feed from canada! his hens were mostly in small pens so his feed bill was very high. lots of birds with little space to graze and high end feed........I totally get why his prices were so high
My eggs are not certified but I have enough space for my hens to graze all day. so little suplimental food for the summer any how. I think next spring I will raise My prices to $3 a dozen...

Thelma, I think $3 is the minimum and that $4 or $5 could be easy to get, too. Bill the Butcher sells his "forager" chickens at much higher prices than regular organic chicken because people are learning that pastured raised meats are more healthy than grain-fed animal products.

Here's some more prices for you (from my area, which is close to you!):
Organic eggs at Costco: $4.69 per 18-count (though likely grain-fed and raised in factory-style housing)

And spud.com which specializes in local, organic food has higher prices as well. The $7/dz eggs are the pasture-raised, local eggs, and the ones at just below $5 are raised on feed. The omega 3 eggs are from layers that are fed flax seeds.

You bawkers are clever and funny.

We charge 2 for banty eggs and 4-5 for large, depending on the season.  We grow as much of our food as possible and free range.  Field corn harvested and then just tossed in the barn during january....potatoes and winter squash are a home run with our girls (just have to steam or boil them)..vermiculture for the mondo snacks.  Organic whole oats are a treat also.  Then alfalfa bales in the winter for seeds and 'greens' and protein.

Always have more customers than eggs.  Currently we hav 50 some odd hens.

P.S., IN PNW organic chicken food can be bought from Scratch and Peck in Seattle and Spokane.

Doug Owen says:

"potatoes and winter squash are a home run with our girls (just have to steam or boil them).."
--
Right on the potatoes, Doug. My hens eat all the boiled potatoes they can get. But winter squash? I feed winter squash and pumpkin (especially including the seeds) to the hens raw and they don't leave any of it, I can tell you.

oh wow, I just assumed we should steam squash!  I will do that for the ducks only...let the chickens enjoy the firm texture!

@Doug: It's all trial and error, brother. If raw squash doesn't work for your hens, then by all means steam it.

$5 - 6 here it downtown Toronto

I pay 3 bawks for a dozen.  Purchase from a customer who thought he should just give them away.  I insisted on helping defray the cost of keeping them and it guarantees that I will get eggs first.

I hope to someday have a few hens again but for now am satisfied with this arrangement.

In pakistan it is aroun 90cents US for a dozen if they are broiler eggs
and 1.5-1.8 time if they are free range local

In pakistan it is aroun 90cents US for a dozen if they are broiler eggs
and 1.5-1.8 time if they are free range local

Just for reference......so I can understand the value better?? How much is a gallon of milk  or a lb of cheese in your area

Here in my area a gallon of typical store milk is about $3.50, and it seems people are paying @ $5 for good quality eggs.....(low quality mass produced eggs in the store are usually about $1.50)

Thelma McGowan wrote:
Just for reference......so I can understand the value better?? How much is a gallon of milk  or a lb of cheese in your area

Here in my area a gallon of typical store milk is about $3.50, and it seems people are paying @ $5 for good quality eggs.....(low quality mass produced eggs in the store are usually about $1.50)

Milk is around .65 cents , cheese we dont have

$4 - $5 for Eggs In Austin. If you can use Paul's Chicken Methods, I'd pay more, since they will have a better nutrition profile, and the cost of feed for you would be lower, so profit would be much higher.

Northern Minnesota

I have charged $2 for 18 counts, get around 20 eggs a day but may average out to more like 16 however some of our layers are about ready for the chop. We only sold to friends and only when we had to many to eat our selves. $2 per 18 may cover the feed it may not I have never tracked it that close but it seems we got feed about every 2 months and in general I spend around 100-120 dollars. We can buy milk here at around 2.50-3.00 a gallon. When we first started selling we charged less, it was a more of a we need to get rid of these extra eggs than we need the money.

Will most likely raise the price again this year but the main reason I hesitate to go for a profit or to sell to people other than our close friends are eggs are not the cleanest thing in the world even when washed well. I don't want to get sued because someone got sick because an egg was not 100% clean and they got a speck of poop in there omelet or something.

Speaking of which does anyone have a really good technique for cleaning eggs? I hesitate to clean to much because they say that there is a protective coating on the egg to protect it and if you wash it to much you will remove this and increase the chance of rotting etc. I refrigerate all my eggs. I also have 2 roosters, used to only have one but had one hatch last year.

I pay a local farmer $3.00 a dozen when I don't have my own eggs. Since my birds were killed yesterday I guess I'll be needing to go buy some eggs. I would gladly pay more for this quality of egg and if they weren't available I wouldn't eat any at all rather than get them from the grocery.

Five bucks. Even at that I wouldn't want to try making a living at it.

You shouldn't try to compete with factory farmed industrial food prices...they are hugely subsidized by cheap energy, unaccounted environmental degradation, government subsidy, unspeakable conditions for livestock, etc. What we do is different, and it has value. People have grown accustomed to artificially low food prices.

I would love to provide healthy food for low income folks, and I don't know how to do that without going broke. Somethings wrong with the whole system. For now I think I will try and help out a few folks with sliding scale rates and charge a good price for those who can afford it.

Slightly off subject but, I met a guy that sold at a Farmer's Market in a very upscale neighborhood. Eggs $5, tomatoes $5/#.
The market closed fairly early in the afternoon, so he would load up his truck and head to the housing projects. Eggs $1, tomatoes $1.
He never had to transport produce back to his farm, made good money, and helped those that needed it.

I charge $4 for a dozen eggs, which seems to be on the high end in my area (Ohio). However, I don't think that's overpriced. I think many people underprice their eggs (and other products) because they assume customers won't pay more than what they pay in the grocery store. Unfortunately, many people do have that mindset, but underpricing a quality product in order to gain those customers will only perpetuate the problem.

Factory farm eggs (even so-called "free range" or "cage free" - don't get me started on that one...) are a completely different product than eggs from a well-cared for small flock (especially if truly free-range or pasture/paddock-raised). There is tremendous value added in not only the nutritional benefits of the eggs, but also in the ethical treatment of the hens, and the price should reflect that.

I live in Costa Rica.
A dozen organic eggs cots about $2.50

We charge $3.00, $3.50, $4.00 for our small, medium, Large "Certified Naturally Grown" free-range eggs. (CNG is a peer-to-peer certification system that is an answer to the USDA's "Certified Organic"program)

We use Certified Organic feed.

"Soy-Free" feed would cost even more.

We figured OUR COST on eggs NOT including infrastructure or any labor is $2.85/dozen.

We've been told by several organic producers that we should charge more.

The cheapest "Organic" eggs you can get around here "commercially" are Walmart for $3.82/dozen 9and they taste terrible, BTW)
Central Market (Dallas) they cost $4.00 minimum

We're in a smaller rural community - so we can't charge "big city" prices.

We'll probably try to raise prices a little come spring.

As for not paying more than $1.50 per dozen - you can certainly do that.
You get what you pay for.
Those eggs are from battery-cage hens raise in deplorable conditions.
They're fed the cheapest, conventionally-grown, GMO and chemical-laced feed available.
The feed is packed with antibiotics (like arsenic - "Roxarsone") because the birds are in such filthy, crowded conditions, they'd DIE if they weren't drugged.
I wouldn't eat those eggs.
You are what you eat.

PS - don't put lights in your coop. It's unnatural and messes with the hens' metabolism. Let nature run things - isn't that what permaculture is all about?

we charge $5/dozen. only organic food, but we're not certified. I don't buy bagged feed, just 45- or 50-lb. bags of grain to mix. the birds are pastured and we're certified by Animal Welfare Approved. another local farmer sometimes resells our eggs for $6/dozen. in local grocery stores, almost comparable eggs sell for $8/dozen. certainly not our only income, but we do come out slightly ahead at $5.

Paul and Jocelyn talk about organic farm income and cattle in this podcast

They talk about how much one can get for eggs.

Here in SW Michigan they sell eggs at the local market 99 a doz. The eggs are local. But its big agra and the life of the hens is hell. Dirty, nasty, just cruel. The eggs look pithy. MY dogs often question eating them. DOGS! Boiled, fried whatever they will hesitate to eat them. Then I started to not feel well after I ate them sometimes. This has been going on for about a year now. WT you know what! DOGs eat anything. Especially the ones from the big ugly box store.

I was reminded of the dog food contamination we lived thru in SoCal years ago. My 12 dogs stopped eating the dog food. Period. I cooked food for them for 6 months as lots of dogs around us died. I will never trust the food companies. I also noticed the long lines at the local dialysis clinic. Something to think about.

I switched to the local small farmer eggs. I am paying 3 a doz. Better. The best eggs, 4 a doz, I get are true free range and the farmer is making his own feed. Often the bags of feed we think are contaminated or something? I go to the mill and ask questions and I get some surprising hostility. Mmmmmm. Something to think about.

The one farmer near me will only sell to people he knows. I think he is in the process of starting a food club. This avoids a lot of trouble.

Dogs love the local eggs from the farmer mentioned. I can eat them and not get sick.

We sell for $3.00 per doz.

the neighbors and the amish and meninite stores around here charge $2.00 a dozen for local ungraded eggs.
kent

I was considering raising ducks for eggs but after researching it some I found they were so high in cholesterol that I talked myself out of it. What is the general consensus on duck eggs? I also noticed someone commented that they were too small to certify organic but think you may be able to label your product organic without certification if you fall under the minimum earned figure stated in the organic standards. webpage

We pay 4$ a dox outside DC. Those are fresh (sometimes we collect them right from the hen house) free-range (cooped at night) no hormones, no antibiotics, no GMO fed chickens.

Daniel Morse - Food club avoids a lot of problems? This sounds interesting and I've never heard of it. Can you tell me more?